Sidewalk’s vision for Quayside — as a place populated by self-driving vehicles and robotic garbage collectors, where the urban fabric is embedded with cameras and sensors capable of gleaning information from the phone in your pocket — certainly sounds Orwellian. Yet the company contends that the data gathered from fully wired urban infrastructure is needed to refine inefficient urban systems and achieve ambitious innovations like zero-emission energy grids.
— washingtonpost.com

Last fall Sidewalk Labs, a Google-affiliated company, announced plans to build a new smart city model on 12 acres of the Toronto waterfront named Quayside. The design would include infrastructure with sensors and data analytics with the claim of building an overall more streamlined, economical... View full entry

As for what she wants visitors to get out of the exhibit, Koumoundouros just hopes it will help them think about -- even question -- how much our economy is based on the housing market.'Ownership and consumption are linked to how much our economy is consumed based," she argues. "[This view of housing] is so specifically American. And I love digging that out, and I think questioning it is part of maybe a shift.'
— Marketplace.org

The phrase "a place to call home" rings loud and clear in the "Dream House Resource Center" exhibit by artist Olga Koumoundouros currently at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles until August 18. Her exhibit focuses on the commodification of the home in America through the context of America's... View full entry